Make Paper Pool Art with Scrap Supplies

For your own DIY paper pool art, you’ll need:

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How to Make Our Kids Pool Art Project – Instructions:

Create your paper pool background.

To make a simple but effective pool background, you’re going to draw a wobbly grid that gives the illusion of water moving over a tiled surface (doesn’t it look so realistic!?).

Using a white oil pastel or crayon, draw wobbly lines all the way across your paper lengthwise. They can be evenly spaced like ours, but moving water creates fascinating textures and patterns, so let loose and experiment with what looks right to you!

Once finished with the lengthwise marks, turn your paper and draw a similar series of wobbly lines from top to bottom.

Tip: Don’t have a white oil pastel, crayon, or colored pencil handy? You can experiment with using ANY color! Or pick a color of blue that’s a couple of shades darker than your paper – it creates the same illusion, just a different look.

Gather supplies for your pool floats.

We cut a few of our pool floats from cardboard (corrugated cardboard REALLY has that classic pool float vibe!) but there are so many household items you can recycle to use in your artwork. Plastic container tops and metal jar lids are a particularly great size and shape.

You can paint things as we did, flip them to an unprinted side, or just leave them be (the printing sometimes actually makes them look even more authentic!).

Print or draw, cut out, and decorate your paper sunbathers or swimmers.

It’s time to add some life to this pool party! We have a printable set of people templates you can download and print, OR you can simply draw your own pool partiers!

Design your own swimsuits from cut-out scrap paper or fabric pieces.

My best tip for this step is that small hands have an easier go of it with BIGGER people and pieces. If trying a variation on this with younger kids, you might find it easier to use larger people, stickers, larger precut decoration pieces, or just let them doodle and scrawl on the people freely!

Create your pool composition and glue.

So now you have your pool background, people/person, and mini pool floats. Try laying them out in different compositions to see what looks best to you. Once you’ve found a favorite, use a glue stick to glue everything down.

For our second piece, we glued the pool to a painted cardboard background and used a hot glue gun to glue the 3D pieces of our project onto the paper and cardboard. We made a simple hook out of a paperclip and hot glued it to the back so we could hang the whole project on the wall.

The three-dimensional elements make this especially fun to look at from all angles!

Five Variations On Our Kids Paper Pool Art Theme

1. Use clay instead of paper for your pool partiers.

A fun variation on this would be to use air-dry clay and paints to make miniature clay pool floats, and pool party people. How fun would it be to see little sets of painted clay legs popping out of the water? Or make a clay diving board and experiment with creating the illusion of a splash out of clay!

2. Create pool float playdough mats.

Instead of creating paper artwork pieces, younger kiddos might enjoy a chance to dig into the sensory side of this project while also working on a bit of design exploration. Visit the simple tutorial to make your own quick DIY summer swim playdough invitation here!

3. Create a giant collaborative paper pool mural.

Thinking this might be a perfect end-of-school-year classroom project or bulletin board? This project has so many fantastic collaborative opportunities! You can create a huge pool background on a roll of blue kraft paper, then invite your students to make their own summer pool self-portraits and mini pool floats.

4. Build a 3D city pool diorama.

For this project, kids can make a three-dimensional diorama using a shoebox or similar-sized box.

This diorama can also include sun loungers made from cardstock, a tiny sun umbrella made from paper, and even a snack bar with paper food items. You can use our cardboard dollhouse pool for inspiration!

5. Make a “My Day at the Pool” storyboard.

This art project would involve kids creating a storyboard of a day at the pool. They can cut out a large pool shape from blue construction paper and paste it onto a larger sheet of paper. Then, they can use the paper pool floats, paper people, and additional details like cutout sun, trees, or beach balls to tell a story. They can even write captions under each scene.

Six Artist-Inspired Paper Pool Art Projects for Kids

So you’ve got the idea, but need a little pool art inspiration…? Many of my favorite artists have featured pool themes in their work. If you ever get a chance to see any of these pieces in person, be sure to take your little ones, because there is nothing like seeing them up close!

Here are a few artist-inspired pool art projects for kids you can use to explore different mediums while enjoying pool themes – with a splash of contemporary art education!

Note: Behind these series’ is always a deeper message to explore – taking some time to look at these pieces can be a great way to initiate important conversations with kids.

1. A David Hockney Inspired “Splash of Color” Project

Materials: White drawing paper, watercolors, brushes, blue tissue paper, scissors, and glue.

Process:

• Start by showing some examples of Hockney’s pool series. Note the way he uses bold colors and clean lines.
• Draw a simple pool shape with pencil on the drawing paper.
• Fill in the pool with blue watercolor, let it dry, then add reflections and shadows with lighter and darker shades of blue.
• Cut out different shapes from the blue tissue paper (to mimic the splash) and glue them on top of the pool.

2. Derrick Adams Inspired Paper Mache Pool Float Sculptures

Materials: Paper Mache, tin foil, and tempera or acrylic paints.

Process:

• Show examples of Adams’ Floaters series, discussing how he combines the human figure with vividly colored pool toys and accessories to create joyful pool scenes.
• Form fun pool floats out of paper mache and let dry.
• Once dry paint the paper mache pool floats with bright colors, adding fun, unique details.
• Kids can add figures of themselves to their pool floats for a more advanced project. Begin by creating the basic form from tin foil, cover it in paper mache, let it dry, paint, and rest it on your paper mache floats.

3. A Jenny Odell Inspired “Dream Water Park” Project

Materials: Paper, crayons, markers or colored pencils, and scissors

Process:

• Show examples of Odell’s satellite collections (including 125 Swimming Pools), exploring how she collects pictures of swimming pools from satellite images.
• Invite kids to draw a series of imaginative dream pools or water park experiences from a bird’s eye view. Fun details are encouraged, but each drawing should only take up about an eighth of the paper.
• Kids can cut out their pools and arrange them into a composition to create their dream waterpark. Encourage them to think about how the pools’ locations relate to one another.
• Invite the kids to discuss the different shapes, sizes, and styles of the pools in their work. Is there a method or reasoning behind the layout of their waterpark?

4. A Collaborative Henri Mattise Inspired Pool Mural

Materials: Construction paper in various colors, scissors, and glue.

Process:

• Provide examples of Matisse’s cut-out style and his work The Swimming Pool, discussing his technique and the way he used shapes and colors.
• Cut out shapes of swimmers from different colors of paper.
• Arrange and glue them onto long strips of blue kraft paper to create a mural that spans the length of a bulletin board, wall, or hallway.

5. Robert Bingaman Inspired “Nightswimming” Art

Materials: Black paper, blue and white pastels, or chalk.

Process:

• Show Bingaman’s Night Pools series, noting the way he uses light and shadow.
• Draw a pool shape on black paper with chalk or pastel in shades of blues, greens, or purples.
• Use white or light pastels to add lights and reflections on the pool surface.

6. Posed Pool Portraits inspired by artist Mária Švarbová’s

Materials: Toy figurines, a small shallow dish or tray, blue food coloring, and a camera or smartphone.

Process:

Discuss Švarbová’s swimming pool photography, focusing on the staged style and use of repetition and symmetry.

• Fill a shallow dish or tray with water and add a few drops of blue food coloring for the “pool.” Create a simple background using painted cardboard or poster board.
• Arrange toy figurines in or around the “pool.”
• Take photos of the scene, experimenting with different angles and positions, how you can capture reflections, or what it looks like if you pose the figurines differently.